Dr. Elissa Bemporad, Queens College
One defining feature of Jewish life in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s founding was something found nowhere else in Europe: sweeping, state-funded campaigns against antisemitism. Backed by the Soviet government, these efforts sought to dismantle the tsarist legacy of anti-Jewish violence and discrimination and represented an unprecedented official commitment to combating antisemitism. Yet the Soviet struggle against antisemitism was marked by deep inconsistencies and contradictions from the very beginning. This tension became a recurring hallmark of Soviet policy, persisting throughout the interwar years, continuing during World War II, and extending into its aftermath, especially in the newly occupied territories of the Soviet Union.
Elissa Bemporad holds the Ungar Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust and is Professor of History at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is a two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award. She is the author of Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk (2013), and Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets (2019). Elissa is the co-editor of two volumes: Women and Genocide: Survivors, Victims, Perpetrators (2018); and Pogroms: A Documentary History (Oxford University Press, 2021). She serves as editor of Jewish Social Studies. Elissa is currently finishing the first volume of the Comprehensive History of Soviet Jewry (forthcoming with NYU Press), and is at work on a biography of Ester Frumkin.
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